(“GAMMA”)

NOTES FOR ARTICLES “THE ‘DISARMAMENT’ SLOGAN”
AND “THE MILITARY PROGRAMME
OF THE PROLETARIAN
REVOLUTION”[1]

“Disarmingis emasculation. Disarming is a reactionary-Christian
jeremiad. Disarming is not a struggle against the imperialist
reality, but a flight from it into the beautiful future
after the victorious socialist revolution!!” (cf. Victor
Fischer)....

“Militarisationof the nation” , “an armed people”, what a
misfortune!—one hears this more and more frequently. But we say:
militarisation of the nation, an armed people, drawing children and, if you
like, women, into military training—so much the better, the
speedier will the war be turned into a civil war, into an uprising. Help?
No, we will not help the trusts.

Disarmamentinstead of arming the people.

1. The voice of the small countries.

2. Against all war?

3. National war.

4. “Theses.”

5. Civil war.

6. Socialist war.

7. The oppressed class?

8. Concession to opportunism?

9. No opportunism and Kautskyism here.

10. Militarisation of the nation.

11. Commune.

12. First, the fight against opportunism and Kautskyism.

13. Second, a concrete programme.

14. Third, practical “demands”.

15. Two lines of policy in Switzerland.

Tothe question “Militia or disarmament?”

I.Disarmament or disarming of the people or something
similar? (instead of a militia).

II.The oppressed class has not sought to study and master the art of
war? (Engels in Anti-D\"uhring, on militarism on the way to
destruction).[2]

III.Concession to opportunism, or the ease of slipping into
opportunism?

Nothere, not in this.

+ attempts to avoid
revolution

||

All democratic changes facilitate this. (The
republic. Separation of the church from the state, etc.).... Exception
(America)....

General struggle, all along the line, against overt and masked opportunism
(Kautskyism).

+ imperialism in Switzerland
(Nakhimson)

Press down on the enemy (opportunism)
everywhere. Changes in programme. No
to Swiss militia (especially after 1907).

IV.Practice. Formulas or revolutionary practice? Now, at this
moment—propaganda of disarmament or disarming? Nonsense! Help the
revolutionary struggle in neighbouring countries, turn the imperialist war
into a civil war. 20,000 x 2 pfennigs = 20,000 francs per annum. Three
newspapers, their delivery.

Notes

[2]
Engels in Anti-D\"uhring, Part II, Chapter III, “The Force
Theory (Continuation)”, writes as follows about the capitalist states: =
“The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself;
the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism
dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism also bears within
itself the seed of its own destruction. Competition among the individual
states forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the
army and navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their
financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal
compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run
making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore
enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the
war-lords in command.... At this point the armies of the princes become
transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work, and
militarism collapses by the dialectics of its own evolution”.
p. 248